“It’s just …” She let her voice trail off and gave Miranda an apologetic smile.
“Ugh, I knew it,” Miranda cried. “Look at me—I look like a tree! She flicked the low, loose green top with her index finger. “Big, thick trunk and a slutty green top. Great.”
“You do not look like a tree,” Harper assured her, half laughing and half kicking herself for getting Miranda started down this road. “It looks good, really,” she insisted.
Too little, too late.
Miranda was already back inside the dressing room, and soon Harper saw the shirt and skirt drop to the floor. She looked at them longingly. She could always save up some money, come back in a few weeks—if they were still there….
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Miranda’s disembodied voice complained from behind the curtain. “Sorry I wasted your time with this stupid trip.”
She came out, in her own clothes, and extended a hand to Harper, hoisting her up off the ground. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“You’re not getting anything?” Harper asked in disbelief. There went three hours of her life she’d never get back—and with nothing to show for it.
“Just this,” Miranda sighed, holding up a shirt that was almost identical to the one she was wearing.
So—nothing to show for it except a pain in her ass from sitting on the floor and a white V-necked T-shirt that she didn’t even get to take home with her. Not that she would have wanted it.
Miranda slung an arm around Harper’s shoulder.
“Screw the shopping,” she said, leading her friend out of the fitting area. “Let’s go get some coffee. My treat.”
Harper took one last longing glance at the pile of clothes dumped in the corner of her best friend’s dressing room. Too bad she and Miranda couldn’t be combined into a single person—with her body and Miranda’s wallet, they’d be looking pretty damn good.
Harper slipped a hand into the pocket of her fake Diesel jeans, just in case a few crisp twenty-dollar bills had decided to magically appear.
Nope.
“Coffee it is,” she agreed. “Definitely your treat.”
Grace wasn’t a Starbucks kind of town. Big shock. If you wanted coffee, you had two choices. You could drink the black sludge they dished out at the diner, or you could step inside an unassuming and unnamed hole in the wall in the center of town and drink the finest blends this side of the Mississippi. The neon sign out front said only HOT COFFEE. (Or rather, it read HO CO FE .) But if you were a local—and in Grace, who wasn’t a local?—you knew it as Bourquins, after its owner, an angry, rotund woman who went by Auntie Bourquin. No one knew her first name—and no one had the nerve to ask. Auntie Bourquin was slow and surly, and her establishment was cramped and not too clean—but the coffee was delicious, and the fresh baked goods that appeared every morning tasted like chocolate heaven.
Miranda, who was feeling worn, deflated, and ugly after her unsuccessful bout with the shopping gods, had every reason to hope that a steaming diet mochaccino and an oversize chocolate chip cookie (it was the constant and bitter irony of her life that feeling fat and ugly made her want to run for the cookie jar) would cheer her up. They didn’t call it comfort food for nothing.
But comfort wasn’t in the cards.
“Do you see what I see?” Miranda hissed to Harper as soon as they’d stepped inside the coffee shop. At Harper’s clueless look, Miranda jerked her head toward the far wall, where Beth was huddled over a stack of notebooks, clearly studying her bland little heart out. Not a big surprise. The surprise was sitting across from her—and his name was Kane. She pulled Harper back out the door, hoping they hadn’t been seen. “What’s he doing with her?”
“Calm down, she’s just tutoring him for the SATs,” Harper said impatiently. “Can we please go back inside now?”
“She’s tutoring him?” Miranda asked incredulously.
“What’s the difference?”
Harper could be so dense sometimes. Miranda knew that when Kane looked at her, he didn’t see some babe he was desperate to bed. She knew he probably didn’t even see someone he was that eager to be friends with (fortunately for her, he was stuck with her by default—she and Harper were pretty much a package deal). But she’d always thought that he’d at least seen her as a brain. Who did he call when he needed to copy some homework? Who did he go to when he needed to cheat on a test?
Miranda, that’s who. It had been her one thing, and she had always hoped that someday it might be her in. It was, if nothing else, a start.
So what had changed?
“The difference is, if he needed someone to tutor him, why didn’t he just ask me?” Miranda asked, staring at the two of them through the window. They were laughing about something, and she saw Kane briefly touch Beth’s arm. And she knew. “He’s after her, isn’t he?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harper said quickly. “She’s dating one of his best friends. Even Kane wouldn’t stoop that low.”
“But look at them in there,” Miranda said dubiously.
“Miranda, if he were after her, I would know. I promise.”
“I still don’t understand what he’s doing with her,” she complained. “They’re not even friends.” And she wanted very much for it to stay that way. As far as she was concerned, she had one—and only one—advantage over the bimbos Kane constantly draped himself with. They were bimbos—and Miranda wasn’t. So if he ever got tired of making conversation with beautiful airheads, if he ever wanted a real relationship with a real girl, where else would he look but his old friend Miranda? Or, at least, that was her secret hope. But it all depended on the fact that, aside from Harper, Miranda was the only girl of substance he really knew—until now. For all Beth’s blandness, she was sharp, serious. Real. If he befriended tall, slim, beautiful Beth, if she was in his life when he finally stopped playing the field—then Miranda’s last, best hope was dead.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Rand, really,” Harper assured her. “Can we go in now?”
But Miranda shook her head and turned away without a word, walking back over to the car. Her appetite was gone.
They had spent two hours buried in books, digging their way through algebra equations and an endless list of synonyms for good and evil. And there was still so much more to do. Beth felt the familiar flutter of panic as she began to think about the massive number of practice questions she needed to get through and strategies she needed to memorize before the big test—but somehow, everything seemed a little less daunting than before. Maybe because, thanks to Kane, she was no longer alone. Maybe because he’d bought her a mug of chocolate milk and a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie, the best in town. (It was a little juvenile, Beth knew, but her sweet tooth demanded daily chocolate intake, and nothing was better than a Bourquin’s cookie dipped into a frosty glass of chocolate milk. Kane had been only too happy to oblige.) Maybe it was just Kane, sitting across the table from her, working, questioning, laughing—making the time fly by. They’d only had one afternoon together, but she could already tell that working with Kane was going to be nothing like she’d expected.
He was nothing like she’d expected, Beth mused, watching him up at the counter grabbing them both refills.
The Kane she knew was smug and self-absorbed, caustic and catty, and above all, lazy.
Not this Kane.
Not the guy who’d pulled out her chair for her when she’d sat down, who’d thanked her so profusely for spending the time to tutor him, and who’d been working diligently, without a break—or a single snide remark—for more than two hours.
No, this was a complete stranger to her. But she hoped he wouldn’t be for long.
Adam flipped through the channels idly, too bored to watch anything for more than a few seconds. It was pretty slim pickings: a Food Channel documentary on the secrets of cereal (hot stuff), a stupid political show … even ESPN was showing some kind of greatest hits montage of old golf shots, and who wanted to watch tha
t? No one under the age of sixty-five. Adam would be willing to bet on it. And thanks to Secrets of Las Vegas, showing around the clock on the Travel Channel, he now knew exactly how and where to do so.
Just because Beth had stood him up was no reason to spend the day lying around on the couch, counting the cracks in the ceiling, he reminded himself. It’s not like he didn’t have plenty of other friends and plenty of other options. It was just that there didn’t seem to be much of a point. Why go to all that effort just to do something he didn’t particularly want to do? He wanted to spend some time with his girlfriend. Was there something wrong with that?
So he’d told the guys to leave him out of whatever half-assed activity they’d come up with for the afternoon (last he’d checked, it had been a tie between bowling and shooting rats down at the town dump—neither a big draw, as far as he was concerned). But half-assed activity or not, he was beginning to regret the decision. Even hunting rats might be better than lying on the couch nibbling stale pizza all day.
Lucky for him—and for the rats—the phone rang.
“I thought you might be a little bored,” Harper said by way of a greeting.
She didn’t know the half of it.
“I just ran into Kane and Beth at the coffee shop,” she continued, “and figured you might need someone to play with.”
Adam’s stomach clenched, but he forced himself to ignore it. He also forced himself—and it took a significant mental and physical effort—not to request any details. So what if his girlfriend and his best friend were getting cozy over coffee while he played couch potato?
“She’s tutoring him for the SATs,” Adam explained gruffly.
“I heard that,” Harper said in a perky voice. “It’s so nice of her—I know how busy she always is. It’s great that she made the time for him.”
Drive the knife in a little deeper, why don’t you, he thought, but struggled to keep his irritation in check. After all it’s not like any of this was Harper’s fault.
“You know Beth,” he offered half-heartedly.
“She just can’t say no,” Harper agreed.
Interesting choice of words, Adam mused. Lately, it seemed that “no” was the only word in Beth’s vocabulary. At least when it came to him. When it came to the questions that counted.
But that, too, wasn’t Harper’s fault.
“So I’m bored,” he admitted. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Funny you should ask….”
Freshly showered and changed from his ratty Lakers shirt and boxers into jeans and a slightly less ratty Red Sox shirt, Adam met Harper in his driveway, and they drove to the 8 Ball, a pool hall on the outskirts of town. The place was reliably empty on a Sunday afternoon, except for a few die-hard pool sharks and a deathly pale, spiky haired bartender with a thick snake tattoo coiled around the length of his right arm. He waved at Harper as she came in, and Harper grinned back, giving him a sly wink.
“You know that guy?” Adam asked. But she’d already left his side, flitting over to the bar to order them a pitcher of beer. With a bemused shrug, he followed behind and slid into a seat at the bar next to her as she poured them both a mug of Pabst. It was crap, but it was also five dollars a pitcher—three on Sunday afternoons. The large wooden sign on the wall read CONSERVE WATER: DRINK BEER—and Adam was only too happy to oblige.
“So, you come here often?” he asked Harper, leering as if it were a pickup line.
“I get around,” Harper, reminded him. Like everyone else she knew, Harper had a fake ID—not that you needed one in a place like Grace. It was one of those towns where everyone knew everyone else—which meant every bartender in town knew Harper and her friends were underage. Fortunately, it was also one of those towns where none of them cared.
“I just had no idea this was your kind of place,” he admitted, raising his glass to her (once he’d managed to peel it off the mysteriously sticky tabletop).
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she pointed out, laughing. She downed her beer, then leaped up and tugged him toward one of the pool tables. “Come on, hotshot, time to show me your moves.”
“I don’t know … ,” Adam hedged. Harper in competitive high gear wasn’t a pleasant sight to see. (After losing a close game of Monopoly in third grade, she’d accused him of cheating, then stuffed two game pieces—the metal thimble and top hat—up his nose.)
“I’ll go easy on you,” she promised. “What—are you afraid of losing to a girl? Chicken?” She started clucking and flapping her arms, and soon the couple next to them—Adam assumed it was a couple, though he couldn’t tell the man from the woman—turned to stare.
“Enough, woman!” he roared in mock anger, throwing his arms around her from behind in a tight bear hug. “You asked for it.” He lifted her off the ground easily and carried her over to one of the pool tables. She squealed and kicked her feet in the air, but it was no use.
“I’ll only let go if you promise to behave,” he warned her, depositing her in front of one of the tables.
“As if I’d ever promise to do that,” she giggled, and despite the fact that her arms were pinned to her sides, she began to tickle him—after years of practice, she knew exactly the right spots. Adam shivered with laughter and let go immediately, backing away. She smacked him affectionately on the butt and grabbed a pool cue.
“Enough playing around, mister. Let’s get down to business.”
Harper leaned over the pool table, drew the cue back, and, in a single, graceful sweep, knocked it into the cue ball, hitting it dead center. She paused, her chest grazing the soft green felt, her ass only a few inches away from Adam, who hovered behind her waiting for the shot and, she hoped, admiring the way she filled out her dark, snug jeans. The cue ball slammed into the eight ball and sent it skidding across the table into the far corner pocket, exactly as she’d planned.
Victory!
She spun to face Adam, who shook his head in rueful defeat.
“I give up, Harper,” he said, throwing his arms up in surrender. “Three games in a row? You’re clearly a better man than I.”
“Let’s not forget the two darts games in the middle,” Harper pointed out. One of the things she loved about Adam was that he knew how to lose (of course, another thing she loved was that it was a skill he didn’t need to use very often). “What can I say? I came, I saw, I conquered.” And this was different from the rest of her life how? “You came close in that last game,” she conceded, softening a bit.
“Yeah, real close,” Adam said sarcastically, rolling one of his striped balls into a corner pocket. There were still four left on the table.
“What? Can I help it that I’m a natural?” Harper asked with a grin.
“Yeah, yeah, come on, champ—let me buy you a victory drink before I take you home.”
He grabbed her hand and led her to the bar, and Harper took a deep breath, glad he was a step ahead and couldn’t see the way her face lit up at the touch of his fingers on hers. They’d had such a long, amazing afternoon, laughing and bickering and horsing around. Not flirting—for how could you flirt with someone you’d known your whole life? Flirting required some air of mystery, the sense that you were hiding more than you were revealing, the possibility that a look, a word, a touch all meant more than you were willing to admit. With Adam, everything was transparent, every move anticipated and understood.
Not that she didn’t have her secrets, of course. There was the small fact that she was hopelessly in love with him. The smaller fact that she was conspiring to send his girlfriend into the arms of another guy.
But when they were together, and things were going well, stuff like that disappeared. It was like she could stop hiding, stop strategizing, stop anticipating, and just be. Not “be herself,” because who was the “real” Harper Grace after all? Who knew? Who cared? No, with Adam, she didn’t have to worry about being herself—but she didn’t have to be someone else, either, like she did for the losers at school.
Being popular was like a 24/7 game of Let’s Pretend. It didn’t matter to them who she really was—all that mattered was who she needed to be. Who she appeared to be.
With Adam, it was different. She was different. She was, they were, Harper-and-Adam, a seamless organism different and somehow better than either one alone. And there were times, when she caught a look in his eye or felt the comfortable weight of his arm around her waist, that she knew he felt it too. She could read him like that. Completely.
They were, thus, way beyond flirting.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Chip, the scrawny bartender-cum-bouncer-cum-heavy-metal-wannabe-boy-toy grinning at her from behind the scratched-up bar. Chip was cute enough, and useful—one of the reasons she’d gotten so good at pool was that Chip could always be counted on for a few free drinks, making the 8 Ball a perfect late-night pit stop. Once, in a fit of alcoholic gratitude, she’d even agreed to a date. Big mistake. Now he couldn’t stop leering at her, and unless she wanted to start paying for her beer, she couldn’t afford not to flirt back. Besides, how painful could unadulterated adoration be? And if Adam happened to notice how easily she could turn a guy on? Well, so much the better.
When they reached the bar, Chip ignored Adam, who was attempting to order. Beer for Harper, soda for him—he was too conscientious to drive drunk. Such an adorably good boy. Chip eventually nodded absentmindedly in response to Adam’s request, and filled a glass with beer, never taking his eyes off Harper.
“How you doin’, beautiful?” he asked, grazing his fingers along hers as he handed her the glass. His eyes dipped down from her face to her cleavage, blatantly enough that even Adam noticed—she could tell by the way he stiffened next to her. She loved it. He was priming himself to defend her honor. Perfect.
“Better, now,” Harper replied, taking a demure sip and smiling up at Chip through lowered eyes.
“You’re looking better than ever, I’ll tell you that much.”